


Old Heat

by andrewsarchus



Category: I Will Never Die - Delta Rae (Song)
Genre: F/F, Post-Apocalypse, Revenge, undead character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 16:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18944389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andrewsarchus/pseuds/andrewsarchus
Summary: I loved you on twitter and instagram, I loved you in fire and frost, in riots and war, by forge and hearth.  So long as you're here, I'm not going.





	Old Heat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).



They came for me when you were gone.

I killed two of them and hurt a third one pretty bad. But there were six of them, with rifles. When they were done, they buried me. Maybe they were afraid of what they'd done, maybe they were afraid of what I was. They buried me deep, on the slope of Toad Hill, between the hickory and the pine.

I always thought it’d be over when I died. Here and then gone, like breath on a cold day. Not gone to a better place, just gone.

I'm not gone, and I'm not going. I loved you too long to go like breath on a cold day, or on a hot day. I loved you since I was twelve and you were ten, and things were the way they were before. I loved you on twitter and instagram, I loved you in fire and frost, in riots and war, by forge and hearth. So long as you're here, I'm not going.

By the time you came back, I wasn't flesh and I wasn't bones, though I was still buried deep beneath the pines.

I'm exhaled breath. I'm moss on the branches and I'm the spark in the old power lines. I saw you come back and I saw them lie to you.

You loved me too long to believe them. You loved me since you were fourteen and I was sixteen, and the nights were bright with city lights and rectangles of color from other people's phones. You knew I hadn't just disappeared. You knew that Vicky and Bran hadn't picked up stakes and moved, that Caleb hadn’t had a run-in with a bear trap. You knew they'd killed me and I'd killed them, even if you didn't know where they'd hid my bones.

You knew but you couldn't say. Your people were here, and they needed you. It's not like the old days, where you could go somewhere else, and come back for the holidays, or talk on the phone. You went for a time, but you had to come back. So you stayed, when I was gone.

If you hadn't known, it might have rested there. If I hadn't been who I'd been, it might have rested there. But you knew, and I was the witch who they'd trusted and hated and shot down with rifles.

It didn't take one year, or two, but they came for you, same as they'd come for me.

They came for you when you were going back home from your parents, on an afternoon when a storm was brewing in the east, thunderclouds thick on the horizon, and a wicked wind blowing.

They didn't have rifles when they came for you. Didn't think they needed them. You were a doctor, not a witch, you were kind, not cruel. You'd go down below the pines and the hickory, meek as a lamb, not spitting fire, down to where the roots that went through my ribs would go through yours.

It was four of them. Mike and Josh Dixon, who'd been meatheads in high school and were still meatheads. Cerise Johnson, who'd liked us and wanted to be like us until that curdled into hatred, and Jeffy Taggart, who was with Cerise, and who'd wanted to be with you. Jeffy was the one who'd pulled it together. I saw through the headlights of the Dodge rusting in his driveway, I heard through the crows that nest in the branches of the hickory whose roots go through my ribs. Jeffy has a baby face, and he's always polite, and his heart is more rotten and gone than mine.

They waited until you were off of your bike and you'd left it by the fence. Bike like that, working, good condition--they didn't want to take any risks of hurting it. Or of you getting on it and getting away, but that didn't trouble them so much. Yeah, you were a doctor, and yeah, nobody had real problems with your folks except because of you. But you knew what they'd done, and I was the witch who they'd done it to.

Not a lot of folks bothered with locking their front doors anymore. You did, so they weren't waiting for you inside. They were across the street, behind the hedge of what used to be the Henderson's house. Should've kept that trimmed, should've. . . we should've done plenty of things, and we didn't. So you didn't see them until you were halfway up the walk, and there wasn't any point in trying to run back to the bike, or to run at all. 

The Dixons were meatheads. They'd gotten through high school because the football team needed them, and Mike had made All-American in track in his first year in college, before everything fell apart.

I was your frightened breath, I was the broken lightbulb on the porch that saw you fumbling with your keys as you hurried up the walk, I was the house we'd had, as they got to you before you got to the porch.

"Hey," said Jeffy, as Mike Dixon got to the door before you, Josh a half-step behind. "How's it going there, Stephanie? Been a while, figured we should talk."

He still fit into his letter jacket from high school just fine, and he had a knife under that jacket. Big one, with a worn wooden hilt and a spring-steel blade. He wanted to be the one to cut you, and he was going to cut you.

You didn't know about the knife, but you knew that it was Jeffy, and you knew that he didn't want to talk, except maybe to gloat a little. But you turned and faced him, brave and ready. "It's been a while," you said, and Cerise gave a little titter.

I was an exhaled breath, I was a thing buried and put aside. I was the wind and I was the trees.  
There was a gust from the south that made the branches creak. "Storm coming," said Mike, behind you. "Can we get inside?"

I loved you too long to let you go. Since you were ten and I was twelve, since I was sixteen and you were fourteen. I loved you when everyone had internet and air conditioning, when fish died and people died, when everything went cold and dark. The bullets are anchors and the earth is chain, but anchors rise and chains break.

They would not get inside.

There'd been a fire out back behind the Henderson's place a week back. Brush burned a little, died out. Ashes linger hot. The wind from the south blew it up, sent the sparks into the tree.  
Jeffy saw me, then, looking over your shoulder. He saw me, then Cerise saw me, as the tree stood and stretched, fire in it crown, crows on its shoulders like a cloud of dark thoughts. Dixons didn't see me. Or maybe they did. They saw the old power lines dancing in the street behind Jeffy and Cerise. Jeffy turned and ran.

The car in the Henderson's garage had gone to rust and ruin lo those years ago. It flew when the tree threw it, and it flew where the tree threw it. Fire and ash, rust and loam and dreams that had died the last time the Hendersons saw their car and knew they weren't going to drive again.

Jeffy Taggart had a baby face and was always polite, and he had a spring-steel knife under his high school letter jacket which he'd sharpened special for you. One second big as his dreams, and mellow with simmered rage. Then four and a quarter seconds of fear and irritation at things not going his way again, it wasn't fair.

Then he was gone, like an exhaled breath. Jeffy never loved anything other than himself for as long as he lived, so there wasn't anything holding him back when that car hit him. He was gone and all the way gone.

The Dixons ran past you, making better time than they had in any track meet we ever had. Cerise was running too, knees crying out with every step, full of fury at us for leaving her behind again somehow.

The tree came up behind them. Not just the tree. Tree and earth and stone and moss, telephone poles and loam and lightning, walking on feet of root and will, crows and buzzards circling its shoulders.

Mike Dixon first. He was furthest. Fire crackled in the tree's crown, gathered together like a fist.

"No," you said. Quiet, but I'd heard you from behind where they lay me down. I'd heard you from beyond forever. "Emma, no."

I wasn't just that tree which stood on feet of root and will, my thoughts were more than the buzzards which circled like a crown. but it was the tree which stopped and listened, as the wild wind blew up from the south. "I've loved you too long," you said, "loved you too long to let you do this. You did what you needed; they aren't going to do any more harm."

I was more than the tree and more than the fire and the wind. The tree stopped where you told me no, and it wasn't moving any more; the crows all circled twice, then flew apart in a gust of wind. I'd done what I'd needed, and I couldn't hold it there for longer.

You held the air to your face and you kissed it, and when the rain came, it came like a benediction.

They buried me deep, on the slope of Toad Hill, between the hickory and the pine, and that's where I lay, roots through my ribs, flesh gone and bone going. I loved you too long to go like breath on a cold day, or on a hot day in June, when a storm blows up from the south. You held the air and you kissed it, and the air was there and kissed you back.

They didn't do any more harm. Cerise tried talking up a little, saying you were as much a witch as I was, and her mother broke her nose for her, and told her not to say shit about shit. Dixons were still meatheads, and they were still mean. But they knew better than to say shit about shit, anyway.

You weren't as much a witch as I was. You weren't a witch at all. But I was a witch, and I loved you too long to let you go. They knew what rattled their windows, they knew what they breathed out. They knew what they'd done, and they knew what I'd do, if you didn't tell me not to. Didn't help them sleep at night, but it didn't lay them down on the slope of Toad Hill, neither.


End file.
